‘Massive transformation’ going around in Australian economy

Okay can I talk to you now about the pre-budget sell. A lot of things change in politics but the pre-budget sell never does. So that's what we're gonna see Anthony Albanese's in The Hunter today. There'll be announcements to the tune of a billion dollars when it comes to solar panels and really this pitch to Australians about you know local manufacturing essentially and local made products boosting Australian businesses. So what can we expect in the budget? Well what you'll see in this budget is a traditional Labor budget and that includes a focus on made in Australia. You're talking about solar panels today it's so important that we are able to you know we've got a massive transformation going on in our economy at the moment. We know we'll need more solar panels, we'll need wind turbines, we'll need batteries. Wherever we can we obviously want to see Australian materials, Australian know-how and Australian products when it comes to meeting that demand. That's important for jobs and wealth creation in this country but we also found out during COVID that if things go bad in the in the international community there's an unexpected shock of whatever type. We're not at the top of the list for getting hold of some of these critical goods and services. We need to make sure that we have domestic capacity and in solar in particular we do the best research in the world on solar but we have traditionally not been able to translate that into a substantial domestic industry. We should be doing our very best to translate that into Australian jobs and Australian wealth and that's what the Prime Minister's committed to. Isn't that because we buy most of our solar panels from China? We do, I think they supply about 90% and there's not a good recycling program at the back end of that afterlife is it? Absolutely and this is a really critical element of Made in Australia. It's remade in Australia as well. At the moment we don't get enough life out of the resources that we're using, out of the materials that we're using. We really should be creating batteries, panels, wind turbines with the thought that in a decade or two or three decades time we don't want those things to end up in landfill. They're full of absolutely valuable materials. We need to be thinking now about how we recycle in the future to prevent that stuff going into landfill and get maximum value out of the precious metals and the materials that are so vital to this transformation in our economy.